Special Relationship (6 page)

"And, I can tell you in strictest confidence, that he also spoke very highly of you."

"Oh really," Alex replied, collecting her thoughts of what to say next.

"He wasn't at the pitch when we won the contract. Not that we expected him to be there, just that yesterday it was nice to meet the person who's paying the bills."

"You are meeting him in the week?"

"Yes apparently so, Katherine is going to call and arrange something."

"Well if there is anything I can help you with beforehand, just give me a call."

She thanked him for his offer and promised she would ring if anything came up.

Afterwards, she began to wonder all over again about the previous day and the people she had met.

She had known
Tavis for only a day and thought it a bit soon for him to be calling her mobile. She'd received a weird text message in the middle of the night and, everyone connected with Hensen, seemed just too eager to please and too nice. She wondered whether the truly nice person might be the one warning her of Hensen, the man.

Since moving to London, Alex had opted for self-enforced exile from serious relationships. She loved Kerry like a sister. And she dated men – she wasn't, after all, she told herself, a nun. But, physical motive apart, she had accepted her new life as an American in London, a single business person who lived alone, and who usually ate and slept alone.

She purposely made no effort to make new lasting friendships. And, now, with the Hensen contract, it seemed, in the space of little more than a day, she was being dragged into a group of people who might expect more than she was willing to give.

By the evening she couldn't wait for Monday to come. Kerry would be in the office, Ade would be on the computers and have his report on Nick
Hensen complete, and she could at least be back in control of her, and her company's, fate. This time of day on a Sunday she found depressing.

Couples were at home relaxing together ready for their Monday starts and preparing their kids for the school week. Meanwhile, she was looking in the freezer at a lasagne wondering whether she could be bothered to heat it.

When she couldn't see 'microwave from frozen' instructions she put it back for more of its solitary confinement and wondered about herself suffering the same fate.

She envied men who could visit the pub on their own, have a couple of pints while reading the paper and leave the establishment without talking a word to anyone other than the bartender.

In London, she'd seen people dressed in frogmen suits while travelling on the subway , cyclists riding naked, old people plunging into freezing lakes in the middle of winter and seemingly regular commuters break out into song at packed railway stations. But nothing seemed to surprise people more than seeing a woman drinking alone in a bar.

She knew too that even if she
sat in a pub reading without looking up, it would be only a matter of time before she would be approached by a man who would ask: 'Are you waiting for someone?'

So what, she thought.

She went to the freezer, took out the lasagne and threw it in the bin. She grabbed a jacket, her phone and the newspaper and walked to The Eagle, remembering the pub's ditty as she went: "Up and down the City road, in and out The Eagle. That's the way the money goes. Pop goes the weasel..."

During her time in her current apartment she had been there enough times to be on name terms with a couple of the staff,

"Hi Karl, a bottle of Pinot please and two glasses."

"Alex, how are you, haven't seen you for a while. Everything Ok?"

"Yes, everything's great, just been busy with work."

She took the wine and the glasses to a corner table facing the window looking out on what has to be said was far from a salubrious view. The pub was opposite a car park which in the evening attracted youths who seemed to be there for various purposes such as drug taking, drug dealing, stealing,
vandalism and what she would describe as "making out".

But, apart from it being a
cosy, welcoming hostelry, it was, she reminded herself, right next door to Shoreditch Police Station.

She sat there drinking her wine and poured both glasses to give the impression she was not alone. But it didn't take long. A man, maybe mid-twenties, certainly very much her junior, emerged from a group of four and approached her.

"Are you waiting for someone?"

"No, I like to drink from two glasses at the same time," she replied, pointing to the drinks on her table.

"I'm sorry, I didn't want to offend you. Excuse me."

He then walked back to his friends.

Alex was surprised. In the past, she had been verbally abused when rejecting similar gambits. But this guy was as polite as a choir boy. And he wasn't bad looking at all. She looked up and when she caught him looking back with a nervous smile she decided she'd been too hasty.

She drank the second glass that belonged to her pretend friend and beckoned him to return back.

"I'm sorry, I was rude, it's just that, you know single girl in a pub often gets bothered by idiots and obviously you are not one.

"My friend might have stood me up. She is a bit
hair brained."

"James," he said, holding out his hand. "

"Alex, pleased to meet you."

"Do you mind if I sit down?" he asked.

"Sure, please do."

"You are American or Canadian?"

"American."

"So what brings you here?" he asked.

Oh what had she done, she thought immediately.

She hated small talk. She thought for a minute that she'd take James back to hers, and he'd be gone in a taxi after after an hour or two.

Instead, he told her of his recent trip to Thailand , his hopes for a new position with a start-up tech company and how he split with his last girlfriend after she had decided to move to Paris.

Alex looked at her phone. "James, I'm really sorry, just got a text from my my friend. She's at the wrong pub...hope to see you again some time."

She was barely out of the door before she started feeling sorry for James and wondering how he would explain her sudden departure to his friends. On her way home she caught the mini-market as the shutters were being closed. She bought a tin of hot dogs, buns, some microwave chips, mustard and a bottle of diet coke.

When in Rome do as you did at home, she thought, as she handed the basket to the cashier.

She was tired now. The races and the drinks on Saturday, the running this morning, more drinks and almost a liaison with James on Sunday. Not to mention text messages in the middle of the night, working on the Hensen contract and talking tactics with two of her workmates.

And she had a big week in front of her.

By the time she got home she couldn't be bothered with the hot dogs. She drank some Coke straight from the bottle, and took off her clothes.

It was gone eleven but the air was quite still, sticky and humid, so she opened her bedroom window as far as it would go and shrugged away the duvet to lay there naked watching the BBC on her iPad.

Within minutes she was asleep. Her iPad was still playing a stand-up comedy show and even if her phone had bleeped with another strange text message she wouldn't have heard it.

At 5.30 the alarm sounded and Alex was relieved that the working week was about to start and so too her contract with
Hensen. There was nothing on her email of note overnight and no text messages.

She showered and draped herself in a towel before making coffee and switching on Sky news, sitting on the leather sofa in her lounge waiting to dry. Today she would find out whether all her weeks of planning would ensure that everything went without a hitch.

As she sipped coffee, rolling news included a piece on the paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius who had been granted bail over the killing of his girlfriend the model Reeva Steenkamp. She continued to wonder why a girl intimate with the shooter would bother to lock the toilet door in the early hours of the morning if she just wanted to take a leak.

These defence lawyers were clever and the more money the
defendant had to spend the smarter they tended to be. She cast her mind back to New York years earlier.

She put some bacon under the grill, and while it was cooking went to the bedroom to try to find something to wear.

White T-shirt under a lilac shirt and short, black skirt. Dull but easy, she thought, and no need for a jacket. The weather bulletin promised another hot day, prompting her to leave even earlier to avoid the crush of the Underground.

Stopping off to collect another coffee en route, she walked to Bethnal Green Station, ready for her two-stop ride to Stratford and, by London standards, the cheap office space she rented there.

Home to the Olympics the previous year, Stratford was still not as fashionable or trendy as her local area where Campus London included all the clever people in big, coloured spectacles, working for the likes of Google.

After she'd turned the key to enter the office with 'Anderson Financial Support' rather
meagrely stated on a make-do card on the door, she looked at her watch. Not bad, she thought. She wondered whether Nick and Katherine would already be in their plush West End Office, making thousands for their clients throughout the world.

'London, a great big money-making machine' was one description she'd read of the city she had come to love. Maybe her small cog needed some maintenance.

Flicking on the lights and the half a dozen computers from which Ade somehow extracted the information that people like Nick Hensen were happy to pay for, she was however excited that, finally, she had a credible business that would, with some luck and yet more hard work, keep her and her and the others gainfully employed.

She switched on the TV too, this time Bloomberg. Forewarned is forearmed and if anyone from
Hensen were to call today at least she might know that the pound was plummeting, the stock markets were rallying or the prime minister had just resigned.

She went through the contract files once again. At
10 am, Hensen wanted a synopsis and clippings on what potential clients and his rivals had been up to, and whether they were winning or losing money.

Ade, where are you? she wondered.

Adrian was as far removed from Nick Hensen as you could imagine. One wore thousand pound suits and the other wore jeans and cheap T-shirts with transferred words saying such as 'Don't blame the Geek.' But when he did turn up, unshaven and probably unshowered as well, his T-shirt actually read 'Freak out and run around!' She hoped he hadn't chosen it specially for this day.

"Morning Ade."

"Hi babe, how's it hanging?" he asked. "Didn't expect to see you this early."

"Adrian, we have less than an hour to send over our first report."

"No worries, he said," sipping coffee.

"Erm...any chance we can get everything ready?"

"Just press 'F6' on machine number three...it'll grab everything they want and send it within five minutes."

"You sure?" she asked.

"Trust me. Don't press it yet, though, as they'll get the info earlier than when they wanted and it won't be up to date."

"I hope you know what you are doing," she replied.

Alex could hardly bear the wait. But at 9.54, Adrian hit the button. The screen flickered from looking like something she could understand to white-on-black gobbledygook. And at 9.59 it flashed up a message "Report sent to Hensen."

"Is that it?" asked Alex.

"Yeah," he replied nonchalantly.

"But how do we know it has gone?"

"Our computers ask their computers whether they have received their report, and asks the number of characters they have received. If the numbers don't match then it won't show the 'Report sent to Hensen' message. We also check every 20
th
character matches, so it's pretty much foolproof."

"'Pretty much?'"

"It's all really easy stuff," he insisted. "And didn't I explain all this when we were testing?"

"So what do we do now?" she asked.

"Wait for the pub to open. Or you could always declare your true intentions and we can make mad passionate love in the stockroom."

"Adrian!"

An hour later her phone rang. It was Katherine Price.

Alex gulped. The report hadn't arrived, she was sure.

"Nick asked me to call to say thanks," she said. "He has seen what you sent and is happy with it. He also wants you to meet him for lunch on Wednesday, I'm not sure of the venue yet but it will be somewhere central."

"Yes, sure, that'll be great," Alex replied.

"Hope you have recovered from the weekend."

"Barely, but knowing the report went through OK has given me a lift," Alex laughed.

"Listen, I'll get back to you when I've booked something. Any food you don't particularly like?"